The present disclosure relates to a distributed thermal management system that includes thermal controller and fan manager redundancy.
Computer systems may include a power and thermal management system that manages component power utilization. Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS), for example, is a common technique for managing power and saving energy. Computer systems may also include a micro controller as part of the power and thermal management system that controls fan operation within the computer systems based upon component temperature changes. For example, when a component's temperature exceeds a pre-defined thermal limit, the micro controller may instruct a fan manager to increase the speed of a fan in order to cool the device. When communication between the micro controller and the fan manager fail, the fan manager may resort to increasing the speed of each fan in order to avoid thermal failures.